How smoked is my system?

NBtarheel_33 · 2012-07-06, 01:05

So I have a ten-year-old Dell that I thought could do with a RAM increase. Put in two sticks of RAM, turn it on, and get beeping and a blank screen. The fans (CPU and PSU) are still spinning, and the power light is green (so the MB would seem to be OK). May be my imagination, but there might have been a slight ozone-y, burning smell. Turned the system off, took out the new (seemingly incompatible) RAM, and put the original Dell OEM 512MB back in. Booted up, got three beeps, no video. Now that is where I stand - fans spin, green power LED, but three beeps and no video and the system just hangs.

I have tried reseating the RAM in both of the available slots, and still the same problem. Dell's documentation says that the three beeps indicates badly-seated RAM, but I have checked numerous times and it is definitely in there right.

I suppose I have somehow smoked the RAM. Might I have smoked something worse along the way? Would appreciate having opinions/WAGs.

Thanks!

LaurV · 2012-07-06, 03:19

Beeeeeeep-----beeeeeeep------beeeeeep

This is definitively the RAM.

Beeeeeeep--bip-bip-bip

This is the video.

Try clear CMOS first (take the battery out, use tweezers to short the pins of the cmos jumper), check any possible jumpers for selecting internal/external video if you have video on board. If you have any card, take it off try to use the mobo plain, no cards, no hdd/cd.etc. Just CPU, RAM, power, coolers. When you get rid of the beeps and get one-beep-three-very-short-beeps, then you at the "insert video card" step.

lavalamp · 2012-07-06, 19:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by NBtarheel_33

So I have a ten-year-old Dell

One word: dust.

I hate dust, it can cause all kinds of crazy problems. It could be that some got into the ram slot(s) when you were upgrading. Some could even have gotten behind the motherboard and be causing an issue there.

As a general rule, my first impulse is to blame dust for any and every problem, so clean that thing out. Cans of compressed air come in handy if you have one, but be careful not to tip them upside down or you'll spray freezing propellant on your mobo. I'm also a fan of vacuum cleaners for the bigger dust bunnies.

If dusting the box doesn't help, that's when I try a more detailed diagnosis.

If you know specifics on the model of PC it is, and the spec of the RAM you have, I can comment on the compatibility there. Though to be honest, if the RAM physically fit in the slot properly then you should be OK.

NBtarheel_33 · 2012-08-07, 18:02

...Soooo, I think some bonehead (don't know who in the world that might be) might have attempted to insert DDR2 RAM into DDR slots. I'm thinking that might have explained the burning, ozone-y smell, as well as the Best Buy guy's suggestion that the motherboard is fried.

Anyone ever replaced a motherboard? The Dell documentation makes it look somewhat easy. We have also been considering just picking up a new system, and bumping our other systems one notch down in the pecking order (the smoked system is 10 years old), but I hate to lose this system just quite yet, as it is the last one we have with a floppy drive (and we still have plenty of floppies laying around!).

Xyzzy · 2012-08-07, 18:16

They make USB floppy drives.

A ten year old system is going to be inefficient (watts for given work) than a newer system. (Unless all you need is an email or word processing machine?)

You know they stopped manufacturing floppy disks, right?

f1pokerspeed · 2012-08-07, 18:24

Honestly, just get a better one for your money. A motherboard is basically a system, so replace that rather than getting a new computer off the store shelf - it'll save you a couple hundred bob and you can get newer parts on it for cheaper than a new pre-installed computer will be. Also, most computers that you can buy in stores are OEM, so they cannot be upgraded or the case even opened without voiding the warranty.

tl;dr: Get a new mobo.

xilman · 2012-08-08, 17:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by NBtarheel_33

but I hate to lose this system just quite yet, as it is the last one we have with a floppy drive (and we still have plenty of floppies laying around!).

If any of your newer machines have floppy connectors on the mobo, just migrate the drive to that one.

I'm one of the few people around who can still read 5.25" floppies...

Paul

Xyzzy · 2012-08-08, 18:34

Quote:

I'm one of the few people around who can still read 5.25" floppies…

You must have amazing eyesight, unless you are talking about the label on the floppy.

chalsall · 2012-08-08, 19:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

You must have amazing eyesight, unless you are talking about the label on the floppy.

A great (and true) story from a friend of mine who worked as a student support person at the University of Victoria's Computing Department in the late '80s...

A graduate student showed up complaining that she couldn't read her thesis from a (5.25") floppy disc. He asked her if she had the disc on her.

"Sure!" she said, removed it from her back pocket, unfolded it, and handed it over....

NBtarheel_33 · 2012-10-11, 11:15

So, I thought I would follow up on what came of this experience. It turns out that a circa-2004 Dell Dimension 8300 motherboard fits perfectly into the chassis of the Dimension 4500. Even better, the 8300 can take 4GB of RAM and the faster, hyperthreading-capable Northwood chips. So I went ahead and (literally) slid-and-clicked in the new mobo, added 4 GB of *DDR* (rather than DDR2, LOL) RAM (400 MHz FSB, rather than the original 266), and swapped out the 2 GHz Northwood for a 3.20 GHz Northwood with HT capability. Fun fact: Northwoods are faster, clock for clock, than Prescotts, but not nearly as hot. I also added a PCI Wireless Adapter card. Anyway, I got everything going, booted up a few times, and then wouldn't you know it...the old Maxtor 40 GB IDE hard drive kicked the bucket! Click of death and all. That would be the second IDE hard drive I've seen go to meet its maker. So I order a new Seagate 160 GB drive off eBay. It boots a couple of times and then gets real sluggish and then becomes an "Unknown Device" in the BIOS. Can't boot to it at all. So I've RMA'd that drive, and hopefully, the new one will work out. Other than that, this little machine is a beast for its age! The leap from 512MB to 4GB of RAM is HUGE, and the extra processing power is definitely noticeable. Windows 7 installed fine on the system (no fancy Aero or stuff like that, of course), but I did learn that the Northwoods did not support 64-bit OSes, and Windows 8 and above are out because the Northwoods did not feature Execute Disable Bit protection. Prescott was apparently the line in the sand there. Still, for eight-year-old guts in a ten-year-old chassis, and for a computer that my parents will largely make use of for office work and Internet browsing, it was a great learning experience and the result is a pretty decent machine...

...which led me to think, hmm...what could I do for our newer machines? We have a Dell XPS 410 and a Dimension E310 (2007 and late 2006, respectively). The XPS 410 was pretty decently spec'd for its time, but recently it had started becoming a little sluggish, and the antivirus program was using an ever-increasing chunk of the available 3GB of RAM. It turns out that the system could actually take 8GB of RAM (with a 64-bit OS), so I went ahead and installed 4x2GB sticks of DDR2. I also upgraded the CPU from a Core2Duo 1.86GHz (E6300) to a Core2Quad (Q6700) @ 2.66GHz. I am planning to install a second, 500GB hard drive (easier than having everyone move their data off the primary drive) and that will boot to Windows 8 64-bit. Everything went OK with the upgrades here, except I forgot to get the old thermal gunk off the heatsink, so the Arctic Silver 5 that I had applied to the CPU couldn't do its job, and for the first few days, the CPU was reporting temps of 70°-80°C while running Prime95 and the fan was running nonstop at jet engine speed! After a thorough dusting and proper application and seating of CPU and heatsink, temps dropped to high 40s to 55°C at full load of Prime95 (i.e. an LL, two DCs, and a P-1). This machine is really nice now, and I am looking forward to seeing what it can do with a 64-bit OS that will allow the use of all 8GB of RAM. Brent-Suyama is in the future for this one, folks!

As for my Dimension E310, I read where it could take an E520 motherboard (E520 was a higher-end machine for its time in late 2006), but the E310 case would require modification. So I went another way - I looked on eBay and found an E520 for sale for $127. It came with a Core2Duo @ 2.13GHz, the optical drives, and a 500GB hard drive and 4GB of RAM. I upgraded this system to a Quad Q6700 and plan to install 8GB of RAM on it as well, along with Windows 8 64-bit.

The fun thing is that rehabbing all of these systems produced some rather nice results - three systems with fair specs for less than what one new system would cost off the shelf. In fact, quad-core and 8GB is still a very common spec for a "gaming" system today, so I feel like the newer Dells should keep us going for a while, and boost my GIMPS throughput. Moreover, I have been able to recoup a good portion of the upgrade cost by selling off the parts that I pulled to make way for the upgrade. The Core2Duo E6300, for instance, went for $40 on eBay. That was half the price of the Quad. I also feel far more comfortable with working on systems and one day building my own system than I did before. So when Haswell or Broadwell or Skylake etc. come out, I will be ready to build a custom rig. It was less intimidating working with older, cheaper parts to learn, for sure.

And last but certainly not least, I have learned that RAM fits only in the DDR-x slot that it was intended for!

NBtarheel_33 · 2012-10-11, 11:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by f1pokerspeed

Honestly, just get a better one for your money. A motherboard is basically a system, so replace that rather than getting a new computer off the store shelf - it'll save you a couple hundred bob and you can get newer parts on it for cheaper than a new pre-installed computer will be. Also, most computers that you can buy in stores are OEM, so they cannot be upgraded or the case even opened without voiding the warranty.

tl;dr: Get a new mobo.

I was lucky re: the floppy drive. Not only does the Franken-Dimension 4500/8300 still have one, the E520 that I bought has one, too! Not that I use floppies anymore (1.44MB for storage is like a $5 fillup at the gas station), but I do have a few off which I need to copy data. I have a couple of iOmega ZIP disks (remember those? They were kinda like the 8-track of computer storage) that have some data on them from my college coursework, but I doubt there are any ZIP drives out there to read them.

Probably the hardest part of the project was getting the Arctic Silver 5 applied correctly. Very messy stuff, and the syringe-tube tends to get stuck and exude it everywhere but where you would like it to be.

2012-07-06, 01:05	#1
NBtarheel_33 "Nathan" Jul 2008 Maryland, USA 5×223 Posts	How smoked is my system? So I have a ten-year-old Dell that I thought could do with a RAM increase. Put in two sticks of RAM, turn it on, and get beeping and a blank screen. The fans (CPU and PSU) are still spinning, and the power light is green (so the MB would seem to be OK). May be my imagination, but there might have been a slight ozone-y, burning smell. Turned the system off, took out the new (seemingly incompatible) RAM, and put the original Dell OEM 512MB back in. Booted up, got three beeps, no video. Now that is where I stand - fans spin, green power LED, but three beeps and no video and the system just hangs. I have tried reseating the RAM in both of the available slots, and still the same problem. Dell's documentation says that the three beeps indicates badly-seated RAM, but I have checked numerous times and it is definitely in there right. I suppose I have somehow smoked the RAM. Might I have smoked something worse along the way? Would appreciate having opinions/WAGs. Thanks!

2012-08-07, 18:02	#4
NBtarheel_33 "Nathan" Jul 2008 Maryland, USA 5×223 Posts	Uh-oh... ...Soooo, I think some bonehead (don't know who in the world that might be) might have attempted to insert DDR2 RAM into DDR slots. I'm thinking that might have explained the burning, ozone-y smell, as well as the Best Buy guy's suggestion that the motherboard is fried. Anyone ever replaced a motherboard? The Dell documentation makes it look somewhat easy. We have also been considering just picking up a new system, and bumping our other systems one notch down in the pecking order (the smoked system is 10 years old), but I hate to lose this system just quite yet, as it is the last one we have with a floppy drive (and we still have plenty of floppies laying around!).

2012-10-11, 11:15	#10
NBtarheel_33 "Nathan" Jul 2008 Maryland, USA 5·223 Posts	The RAMifications of RAMming in the wrong RAM... So, I thought I would follow up on what came of this experience. It turns out that a circa-2004 Dell Dimension 8300 motherboard fits perfectly into the chassis of the Dimension 4500. Even better, the 8300 can take 4GB of RAM and the faster, hyperthreading-capable Northwood chips. So I went ahead and (literally) slid-and-clicked in the new mobo, added 4 GB of DDR (rather than DDR2, LOL) RAM (400 MHz FSB, rather than the original 266), and swapped out the 2 GHz Northwood for a 3.20 GHz Northwood with HT capability. Fun fact: Northwoods are faster, clock for clock, than Prescotts, but not nearly as hot. I also added a PCI Wireless Adapter card. Anyway, I got everything going, booted up a few times, and then wouldn't you know it...the old Maxtor 40 GB IDE hard drive kicked the bucket! Click of death and all. That would be the second IDE hard drive I've seen go to meet its maker. So I order a new Seagate 160 GB drive off eBay. It boots a couple of times and then gets real sluggish and then becomes an "Unknown Device" in the BIOS. Can't boot to it at all. So I've RMA'd that drive, and hopefully, the new one will work out. Other than that, this little machine is a beast for its age! The leap from 512MB to 4GB of RAM is HUGE, and the extra processing power is definitely noticeable. Windows 7 installed fine on the system (no fancy Aero or stuff like that, of course), but I did learn that the Northwoods did not support 64-bit OSes, and Windows 8 and above are out because the Northwoods did not feature Execute Disable Bit protection. Prescott was apparently the line in the sand there. Still, for eight-year-old guts in a ten-year-old chassis, and for a computer that my parents will largely make use of for office work and Internet browsing, it was a great learning experience and the result is a pretty decent machine... ...which led me to think, hmm...what could I do for our newer machines? We have a Dell XPS 410 and a Dimension E310 (2007 and late 2006, respectively). The XPS 410 was pretty decently spec'd for its time, but recently it had started becoming a little sluggish, and the antivirus program was using an ever-increasing chunk of the available 3GB of RAM. It turns out that the system could actually take 8GB of RAM (with a 64-bit OS), so I went ahead and installed 4x2GB sticks of DDR2. I also upgraded the CPU from a Core2Duo 1.86GHz (E6300) to a Core2Quad (Q6700) @ 2.66GHz. I am planning to install a second, 500GB hard drive (easier than having everyone move their data off the primary drive) and that will boot to Windows 8 64-bit. Everything went OK with the upgrades here, except I forgot to get the old thermal gunk off the heatsink, so the Arctic Silver 5 that I had applied to the CPU couldn't do its job, and for the first few days, the CPU was reporting temps of 70°-80°C while running Prime95 and the fan was running nonstop at jet engine speed! After a thorough dusting and proper application and seating of CPU and heatsink, temps dropped to high 40s to 55°C at full load of Prime95 (i.e. an LL, two DCs, and a P-1). This machine is really nice now, and I am looking forward to seeing what it can do with a 64-bit OS that will allow the use of all 8GB of RAM. Brent-Suyama is in the future for this one, folks! As for my Dimension E310, I read where it could take an E520 motherboard (E520 was a higher-end machine for its time in late 2006), but the E310 case would require modification. So I went another way - I looked on eBay and found an E520 for sale for $127. It came with a Core2Duo @ 2.13GHz, the optical drives, and a 500GB hard drive and 4GB of RAM. I upgraded this system to a Quad Q6700 and plan to install 8GB of RAM on it as well, along with Windows 8 64-bit. The fun thing is that rehabbing all of these systems produced some rather nice results - three systems with fair specs for less than what one new system would cost off the shelf. In fact, quad-core and 8GB is still a very common spec for a "gaming" system today, so I feel like the newer Dells should keep us going for a while, and boost my GIMPS throughput. Moreover, I have been able to recoup a good portion of the upgrade cost by selling off the parts that I pulled to make way for the upgrade. The Core2Duo E6300, for instance, went for $40 on eBay. That was half the price of the Quad. I also feel far more comfortable with working on systems and one day building my own system than I did before. So when Haswell or Broadwell or Skylake etc. come out, I will be ready to build a custom rig. It was less intimidating working with older, cheaper parts to learn, for sure. And last but certainly not least, I have learned that RAM fits only in the DDR-x slot that it was intended for!

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2012-07-06, 03:19	#2
LaurV Romulan Interpreter Jun 2011 Thailand 2²·3³·89 Posts	Beeeeeeep-----beeeeeeep------beeeeeep This is definitively the RAM. Beeeeeeep--bip-bip-bip This is the video. Try clear CMOS first (take the battery out, use tweezers to short the pins of the cmos jumper), check any possible jumpers for selecting internal/external video if you have video on board. If you have any card, take it off try to use the mobo plain, no cards, no hdd/cd.etc. Just CPU, RAM, power, coolers. When you get rid of the beeps and get one-beep-three-very-short-beeps, then you at the "insert video card" step.

2012-08-07, 18:16	#5
Xyzzy "Mike" Aug 2002 2⁵·257 Posts	They make USB floppy drives. A ten year old system is going to be inefficient (watts for given work) than a newer system. (Unless all you need is an email or word processing machine?) You know they stopped manufacturing floppy disks, right?

2012-08-07, 18:24	#6
f1pokerspeed Jun 2012 2×53 Posts	Honestly, just get a better one for your money. A motherboard is basically a system, so replace that rather than getting a new computer off the store shelf - it'll save you a couple hundred bob and you can get newer parts on it for cheaper than a new pre-installed computer will be. Also, most computers that you can buy in stores are OEM, so they cannot be upgraded or the case even opened without voiding the warranty. tl;dr: Get a new mobo.